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Seven questions that keep physicists up at night

Why this universe?

What is everything made of?

How does complexity happen?

From the unpredictable behaviour of financial markets to the rise of life from inert matter, Leo Kadananoff, physicist and applied mathematician at the University of Chicago, finds the most engaging questions deal with the rise of complex systems. Kadanoff worries that particle physicists and cosmologists are missing an important trick if they only focus on the very small and the very large. “We still don’t know how ordinary window glass works and keeps it shape,” says Kadanoff. “The investigation of familiar things is just as important in the search for understanding.” Life itself, he says, will only be truly understood by decoding how simple constituents with simple interactions can lead to complex phenomena.